Label:
XL Recordings
Release Date:
30/08/2004

Occasionally - once a year in you're lucky - a record comes along and falls into
your lap that is so good, so wonderful, that a journalist is positively fearful
of writing about it. How can he put into words what only a few bands can put
to music? How can one person convey the beauty of a recording without sullying
it with mere misplaced words?

'Lesser Matters' is one of those records. The brainchild of Swedish
duo MartinLarsson and JohanDuncanson who are the
core of The Radio Dept., their long-incubated debut LP is a thing of
great fuzzy wonder. Sounding like it was recorded in a world where four tracks
are the most heavenly of all creations, the record gently fizzes along on a
train of buzzing guitars and strained keyboards, with vocals gently focussing
in the background. It has the same majesty and ethereal wonder contained in
the best works of the Flaming Lips, Boo Radleys, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus
and Mary Chain and Mercury Rev, plus tens of other bands who have bled their
soul onto acetate.

Normally it's easy to pick and choose what songs to highlight in a review;
the best or worst. This is a lot harder. All are of great, great quality, and
to pick one over the other would be criminal. But to commit the crime would
go a little like this; The sad/beautiful 'Where Damage Isn't Done' skids
along like the Lips' 'Race For The Prize' but with a moaning Fender Jaguar replacing
thumping drums. 'Keen On Boys' drifts along behind wall of fuzzback with
hypnotic metronomic guitars and echoed room-next door vocals. '_Why Won't
You Talk About It_' squirms away like a gossamer brothers Reid tune; less
'Sidewalking' than Sideslipping. 'Bus' is possibly the most realised
song on the whole album, hinging on a plaintive six string and crescendos with
one of those yearning voices that make you wish you were standing in the dark
and the rain. '1995' is probably what The Radio Dept. call 'jaunty',
but what it really is is a beautiful emotion-lorn paen to youth that would ring
warm with coldest of hearts.

?and it goes on and on.

It's been out for two-and-a-half months, I've been holding it to my heart, secreting
it away for that long, away from clammy media hands and coke-enthused shouts
of the next best thing. Perhaps it's now time to tell you about the album of
the year.